


To Be the Man I Once Was

by MizErie



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Coffee Shops, M/M, Old Friends, Past Relationship(s), Trigger Warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:49:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23169592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MizErie/pseuds/MizErie
Summary: The year is 2055. Frank visits with Gerard in a quaint café.Please note: I'm not listing every relevant tag. In fact, I'm hardly tagging this at all. Tagging this will ruin the story. Be forewarned:Trigger warnings apply.
Relationships: Frank Iero/Gerard Way
Comments: 9
Kudos: 21





	To Be the Man I Once Was

**Author's Note:**

> I saw this story in its entirety after reading [a prompt](https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/fantasy/write-about-a-person-who-meets-with-the-ghost-of-a/) for [Reedsy's weekly writing contest](https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/). I began with the prompt and a blank page, and with the help of a several author friends, I completed this finished piece in less than six days. It was submitted to the contest with different character names and details, but the story itself remains the same.
> 
> Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with My Chemical Romance or the guys that make up the band. No part of this is true; it is purely a fictional story. Any part of this story that resembles real life is only coincidental. No parts of this story may be reproduced or used without permission.

The years haven’t been gentle. Frank’s legs don’t move as quickly as they once did, and his gait falters more often than he cares to admit. He pauses just before the glass front of Déjà Brew to straighten his cinnamon cardigan and comb his fingers through—

“Damn it!” Frank grimaces at the smart of his old shoulder injury from when—he can’t drown in the helplessness and confusion that paralyzed him for months after the collision again. At least, not right now. His shaggy, white hair will just have to remain wind-tousled.

As usual, Gerard is perched in the far-corner booth when Frank enters the retro café. Frank likes this place, with its archaic flat-screen televisions and authentic pu’erh in genuine teabags—he refuses to call them sachets, even when the barista on duty corrects him. It’s certainly better than that insult to coffeehouses down the street boasting the latest holographic entertainment and engineered, counterfeit drinks. Déjà Brew is worth the eventual throbbing in his joints from walking the extra block to get here.

Gerard slides out of the seat with agile grace as Frank approaches. Gerard’s long, black hair and hazel eyes give his pallid complexion a youthful glow. 

“There you are, beautiful.” Gerard’s voice melts years from Frank’s spirit. “I’ve been waiting so long, I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.” 

Frank smiles widely despite the need to embrace Gerard setting his chest aflame. “Never. I’ll always come. I don’t get to see you near enough as it is. Have you ordered?” Frank motions toward the counter. 

Eyes steadfast on Frank, Gerard shakes his head. “Not yet. I wasn’t sure what to get you.”

“The same thing I always get,” Frank answers, approaching the register. The cashier greets them, and Frank orders, “Pu’erh with honey please.” He turns to Gerard. “Let me guess. Tall Colombian coffee, black?”

“If it ain’t broke…” Gerard quips. 

Frank looks back to the cashier, who glances up from the touchscreen with a cocked eyebrow before asking, “So, a pu’erh _and_ a tall coffee?”

“Yes.” Frank waves his paychip over the RF console, not waiting for the total, and collects the number marker for their order. 

“How are things? You doing good?” Gerard asks once they’re back at the corner table. 

“I can’t complain, I guess.” Frank scratches his jaw. “Some days are better than others.” 

The sweet aroma of fresh-baked pastries wafts throughout the café, and Frank smiles to himself. “Do you remember that little bakery we stumbled across? The one just outside Paris?”

Gerard nods and brushes a finger over his lips. “I gave you a bite of whatever-it-was and then kissed you for the first time.”

Warmth rises in Frank’s cheeks. “A pistachio macaron.” Frank can almost taste it now. “That was definitely one of my better days.”

Gerard props his elbows on the table. “Is today better or worse?” 

Frank studies Gerard’s black, velvet sports coat and red, silk tie; the smoothness of his clean-shaven, boyish face; the curve of his upturned lips; and the heavy makeup around Gerard’s eyes. “Better now. I’ve found myself missing you more than usual recently.”

An androgynous server places the two drinks on the table in front of Frank. He nods at them— _Their whole life is still ahead of them_ , Frank thinks—and slides the coffee across the varnished surface. 

Gerard doesn’t move to pick it up but instead leans in toward Frank. “Well, I think you look as good as always.”

Frank stifles a scoff. “I look old. I _am_ old.”

“You can’t be _that_ old, Frankie.” Gerard glances around the coffee shop and furrows his brows. “The world hasn’t changed enough for you to be that old.”

“Gerard, I’m almost 74. It’s been 51 years since you—” The words stick in Frank’s throat, and despite the decades, his soul still bears the open wound as if it just happened yesterday. Frank takes a long sip of tea and settles the cup on the table with a shaky hand. “… since you joined the 27 Club.”

Gerard lowers his head, and Frank draws a deep breath, preparing for the inevitable conversation that’s repeated nearly verbatim every visit. 

“What happened? How did I—” Gerard never finishes that question. 

Frank usually does it for him and then gives Gerard a soft version. They revisit the past, talking and laughing like nothing’s changed. But this time, Frank can’t. Half a century of running from the ghosts that haunt him—all the pills and bad decisions, all the sleepless nights and anonymous sex, all the songs he wrote and the ones he couldn’t get out—has weighed him down and exhausted him. 

Frank’s eyes sting with tears, and a quiet “intentional overdose” is all he can muster. The words are heavy on his tongue. But to finally voice them lightens the burden on his soul, if only by a dandelion seed. 

A chair scraping across the tile floor fractures the café’s repose, quickly followed by the echoing footfall of a young, sobbing lover fleeing. Frank’s been there with Gerard. Both the one running away and the one being run away from. For as much as they loved each other, together they were fire and ice. That made them electric, but it would have eventually been their fatal flaw. If Gerard hadn’t… Tragic, really, that the thing Frank loved most about them was the one thing that could destroy them. 

The commotion seems to go unnoticed by Gerard. He sits gazing into the unknown, his thumb of one hand rubbing his palm of the other. “But we’re going on tour in a few weeks.” 

“When we— _I_ found you…” The entire scene is seared into Frank’s senses. The crunch of pills under foot. The sour stench of vomit. The absolute stillness of Gerard’s body and vacant eyes. The chill of Gerard’s flesh as Frank clutched him to his chest, screaming for help. Frank grips the edge of the table, his fingers blanching. “The tour was canceled, Gee. We tried to make things work, but without you, the band fell apart.” 

The intensity of Gerard’s gaze rips away large swaths of what little fortitude Frank has built up over the years to withstand his guilt, flooding him with nausea and an overwhelming need for physical punishment. He looks away to catch his breath. 

A woman three tables over sips her drink as she watches him, and Frank remembers that Gerard isn’t visible to anyone but him. But he can’t bring himself to care that he appears to be a senile has-been conversing with himself. 

“What about you? What happened to you?” Gerard’s voice trembles, and Frank turns his attention back to him. 

“I kept making records and touring. It’s all I knew how to do, the only way I knew how to be close to you. A bad accident messed up my shoulder, but I still kept playing. I played until I couldn’t strum a guitar anymore.” Frank massages his old injury. “That’s when you came to me the first time. As I sat in this very booth.”

The bell over the door jingles as a young man in dark sunglasses enters the coffee shop, digging his hands deep in his pockets. His shoulders hunch forward, and his face tightens in delayed reactions to the bustling sounds of the café. He’s clearly hungover. 

How many times was Gerard that guy? How many times did Frank sleep off a night of partying, leaving Gerard to deal with his dark thoughts sleepless and alone? Gerard’s drinking was out of control and his drug use the only thing keeping him on what could hardly be called a sleep schedule. His mood jumped from one extreme to another with no predictability. The strain and anxiety of being thrust into the limelight frayed Gerard to his breaking point. In retrospect, it’s painfully obvious Gerard was barely holding himself together. 

What a self-absorbed asshole Frank had been. Frank parts his lips, uncertain of what to say or if he can even speak through the thickness in his throat. “Gerard, I—”

“Will you dance with me?” Frank meets Gerard’s eyes and realizes Gerard has been watching him fight his demons. “I never asked you to dance with me, but I should’ve, every chance I had.”

Frank lifts his cup a short distance and sets it down several times. His arm, his whole body feels weak, heavy. His thoughts swirl in his mind, making him lightheaded. Not once, in the many times he’s visited with Gerard here, has Gerard ever asked him to dance. Frank stares at Gerard, blinking slowly. 

“Yes,” he finally manages to whisper. 

Gerard stands and offers his hand. Frank tries to take it, but his fingers pass through Gerard’s. He drops a loose fist on the table as his heart sinks. Frank crushes his eyes shut and shakes his head. Of course he can’t dance with Gerard. 

Something brushes the back of his fingers, tickling his skin. The memory of Gerard taking his hand rises in Frank’s consciousness. Except it’s real. Gerard pulls Frank up and leads him to an open space just big enough for the two of them. 

Frank settles into the hazy comfort of Gerard’s embrace, more than a recollection yet not quite tangible. Just barely there. Gerard hums in Frank’s ear, rocking Frank with slow, tender movements. 

“I’m tired, Gee.” The words slip from Frank’s mouth unknowingly. “I’m tired of fighting my memories, my pain, my guilt. I’m tired of being alone, of being lonely.” Frank raises his head from Gerard’s shoulder, and Gerard caresses his cheek. “I’d give anything to go back and be with you. To be the man I once was.”

Gerard smiles at him. “Let me take you home, Frankie.” 

Silent tears stream down Frank’s face, and he simply nods his head yes. The press of Gerard’s lips against his own is akin to static. But as the kiss deepens and the ardency builds, Gerard becomes warmer, more incarnate. The ache in Frank’s joints fades, and Frank stands taller, running his hand into Gerard’s hair. He clings to Gerard with all his strength, his very being. Until all that remains is the life they never shared. 

Gerard cups Frank's face and kisses his forehead. “I missed you,” Gerard murmurs, taking Frank’s hand in his and guiding him out. 

Frank steps around the crumpled shell of a timeworn man lying on the floor, hoping he never becomes such a heartbreaking picture of loneliness. 

**Author's Note:**

> The winner of the contest hasn't been announced yet. I will update this once they are. I doubt I'll win, but I can hope. Honestly though, while I'd love the validation of winning, I'm not overly concerned with it because I'm truly proud of this story! 
> 
> **Update: Even though I was a finalist for the writing contest, I didn't win. But being on the short list out of 470+ submissions by professional authors is still quite the accomplishment. I'm thrilled to have even been considered.**
> 
> When I read the prompt, my immediate thought was "What would've happened if Brian hadn't talked Gerard down that fateful night in 2004?" This is what I saw.
> 
> Thank you for reading! As always, my love to each of you!  
> xo Miz


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